old flag flyin',
They shall find him ware an' wakin',
As they found him long ago!

NELSON AND HIS CIRCLE

I

The tradition created by Drake and Hawkins was carried on by Nelson
and Collingwood in a different age and under different conditions, and
the same heroic spirit animated them all. Nelson must certainly have
been familiar with the enthralling tales of these men and of their
gallant colleagues, but without all the essential qualities born in
him he could not have been the victor of Trafalgar. Men have to do
something distinctive, that sets the human brain on fire, before they
are really recognized as being great; then all others are put in the
shade, no matter how necessary their great gifts may be to fill up the
gaps in the man of initiative and of action. Drake could not have done
what he did had he not had the aid of Frobisher, and Jervis would not
have become Earl St. Vincent had he not been supported by Nelson at
the battle of that name; and we should never have seen the imposing
monument erected in Trafalgar Square had Nelson been without his
Collingwood. Victorious and valiant performances do not come by
chance, and so it comes to pass in the natural course of human law
that if our Jervises, Nelsons, and Collingwoods, who are the
prototypes of our present-day heroes, had not lived, we should not
have had our Fishers, Jellicoes, and Beattys.

Nelson was always an attractive personality and by no means the type
of man to allow himself to be forgotten. He believed he was a
personage with a mission on earth, and never an opportunity was given
him that did not confirm this belief in himself.

Horatio Nelson was the son of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, and was born at
Burnham Thorpe on the 29th September, 1758. His mother died in 1767,
and left eight children. Her brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, was
appointed to the _Raisonable_ three years after her death, and agreed,
at the request of Horatio himself and the instigation of his father,
after some doubtful comments as to the boy's physical suitableness for
the rough life of a sailor, to take him; so on the 1st January, 1771,
he became a midshipman on the _Raisonable._ On the 22nd May he either
shipped of his own accord or was put as cabin-boy on a merchant vessel
which went to the West Indies, and ended his career in the merchant
service at the end of an eventful voyage. In July 1772 he became
midshipman on board the _Triumph_. This was the